Casual Gaming Saturday 3

Today's post is very late, for which I'm sorry. Life was a bit hectic this weekend, and I'm not as caught up with things as I'd like to be (I blame my bone-idleness, it's been really bad lately :P)

Game: Holyday City Reloaded
Developer: Holyday Studios
Platform: Browser-based on PC or App store/IOS

At first glance, this is a fairly bland tycoon game. It really was just a super bland tycoon game when it was first published, to be honest. I played it a year or two ago and totally forgot about it until the Reloaded version popped up on the Kongregate homepage and I took the bait. It went from a fairly boring game to a fairly interesting one in the time between when I stopped playing and when I started again!

This is an idle game, which means that you can leave it running in a tab while you're doing other things, like watching New York in 1988 rendered in the Grand Theft Auto IV engine on YouTube or typing up a blog post that's super late. The idea is basically to buy as many different businesses as you can and also to invest in the different industrial zones. From there, you earn different bonuses (Happiness modifiers from your boutiques, coffee shops, night clubs, restaurants, and hotels increase your service sector by a certain percentage, for instance), or even resources. You can get bonuses by spending energy from the power plant or food from the farms, the mine produces metal which you can use after reaching a certain level when the Port opens up, and the lab produces knowledge, which you can spend on boosts to different businesses for different effects.

After a while, the game grinds to a near halt.

At this point, you can "claim your fee", which is basically starting over with a bunch of bonuses. The game gets both easier and harder once you start claiming fees, because your buildings will produce more cash more quickly, but there are more things to do as you level up faster. You probably won't have access to the Port, Marina, Aquarium, Airport, and Island until you've claimed your fees a few times - it's kind of hard to level up sometimes.

There are a few different types of currency in the game, not counting in-game cash or resource currencies. There are the premium Holy Bars (which you never, ever have to spend money on, despite that being an option), the Event-based Coins used to hire Contract Agents (another set of boosters), Pearls (which are gained at the Port and spent on Marina items), and whatever the Event collectible is. Currently, I'm gaining golden microphones, since it's the opera event again. At one point, I think I was gaining coconuts? That sounds right.

There's a lot to this game, really, and it's hard to explain (especially with something like a 14 hour sleep deficit...) so I'll leave you fine folks with a link and a smile.

Go enjoy something!
FC

Holyday City Reloaded

Oh, hey! Learned how to rename links! Go me!